Docker Swarm vs HAProxy

Overview

HAProxy

Stacks2.6K

Followers2.1K

Votes564

Docker Swarm

Stacks779

Followers990

Votes282

Docker Swarm vs HAProxy: What are the differences?

Scalability: Docker Swarm is a container orchestration platform that allows you to manage a cluster of Docker nodes. It provides automatic scaling of services across the cluster, ensuring that your applications can handle increased load efficiently. On the other hand, HAProxy is a load balancer that distributes incoming traffic across multiple backend servers. It helps to scale your application horizontally by directing requests to different servers based on various load balancing algorithms.
High Availability: Docker Swarm provides high availability by automatically rescheduling containers on different nodes in case of a failure. It ensures that your applications are always running, even if a node goes down. In contrast, HAProxy does not offer inherent high availability features. However, you can achieve high availability with HAProxy by using a load balancing setup with redundant servers and implementing failover mechanisms.
Service Discovery: Docker Swarm provides built-in service discovery, allowing containers to discover and communicate with each other using DNS-based service names. This makes it easy to communicate between services within the swarm without worrying about IP addresses. On the other hand, HAProxy does not provide service discovery capabilities by default. However, you can integrate HAProxy with external service discovery tools or configure DNS-based service discovery manually.
Load Balancing Algorithms: Docker Swarm provides different load balancing algorithms, such as round robin, least connections, and IP hash. These algorithms help distribute the load evenly across the containers in the cluster, optimizing resource utilization. In contrast, HAProxy offers a wide range of load balancing algorithms, including round robin, least connections, source IP hashing, and more. This allows for more granular control over load balancing decisions.
Container Orchestration: Docker Swarm is a complete container orchestration platform that handles container deployment, scaling, and management. It provides a unified interface for managing containers across a cluster of nodes. HAProxy, on the other hand, is primarily a load balancer and does not handle container orchestration tasks. It focuses solely on load balancing and proxying requests to backend servers.
Interoperability: Docker Swarm integrates seamlessly with other Docker tools and technologies, such as Docker Compose and Docker Registry. This allows for easy deployment and management of containerized applications. HAProxy, on the other hand, can be used with any backend server or application, regardless of the underlying technology stack. It is not tied to Docker-specific technologies.

In Summary, Docker Swarm provides scalability, high availability, service discovery, and container orchestration capabilities, while HAProxy focuses on load balancing and interoperability with various backend servers and applications.

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Advice on HAProxy, Docker Swarm

Simon

Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH

Apr 27, 2020

Decidedon

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Our whole DevOps stack consists of the following tools:

@{GitHub}|tool:27| (incl. @{GitHub Pages}|tool:683|/@{Markdown}|tool:1147| for Documentation, GettingStarted and HowTo's) for collaborative review and code management tool
Respectively @{Git}|tool:1046| as revision control system
@{SourceTree}|tool:1599| as @{Git}|tool:1046| GUI
@{Visual Studio Code}|tool:4202| as IDE
@{CircleCI}|tool:190| for continuous integration (automatize development process)
@{Prettier}|tool:7035| / @{TSLint}|tool:5561| / @{ESLint}|tool:3337| as code linter
@{SonarQube}|tool:2638| as quality gate
@{Docker}|tool:586| as container management (incl. @{Docker Compose}|tool:3136| for multi-container application management)
@{VirtualBox}|tool:774| for operating system simulation tests
@{Kubernetes}|tool:1885| as cluster management for docker containers
@{Heroku}|tool:133| for deploying in test environments
@{nginx}|tool:1052| as web server (preferably used as facade server in production environment)
@{SSLMate}|tool:2752| (using @{OpenSSL}|tool:3091|) for certificate management
@{Amazon EC2}|tool:18| (incl. @{Amazon S3}|tool:25|) for deploying in stage (production-like) and production environments
@{PostgreSQL}|tool:1028| as preferred database system
@{Redis}|tool:1031| as preferred in-memory database/store (great for caching)

The main reason we have chosen Kubernetes over Docker Swarm is related to the following artifacts:

Key features: Easy and flexible installation, Clear dashboard, Great scaling operations, Monitoring is an integral part, Great load balancing concepts, Monitors the condition and ensures compensation in the event of failure.
Applications: An application can be deployed using a combination of pods, deployments, and services (or micro-services).
Functionality: Kubernetes as a complex installation and setup process, but it not as limited as Docker Swarm.
Monitoring: It supports multiple versions of logging and monitoring when the services are deployed within the cluster (Elasticsearch/Kibana (ELK), Heapster/Grafana, Sysdig cloud integration).
Scalability: All-in-one framework for distributed systems.
Other Benefits: Kubernetes is backed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), huge community among container orchestration tools, it is an open source and modular tool that works with any OS.

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Detailed Comparison

HAProxy	Docker Swarm
HAProxy (High Availability Proxy) is a free, very fast and reliable solution offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications.	Swarm serves the standard Docker API, so any tool which already communicates with a Docker daemon can use Swarm to transparently scale to multiple hosts: Dokku, Compose, Krane, Deis, DockerUI, Shipyard, Drone, Jenkins... and, of course, the Docker client itself.
Statistics
Stacks 2.6K	Stacks 779
Followers 2.1K	Followers 990
Votes 564	Votes 282
Pros & Cons
Pros 134 Load balancer 102 High performance 69 Very fast 58 Proxying for tcp and http 55 SSL termination Cons 6 Becomes your single point of failure	Pros 55 Docker friendly 46 Easy to setup 40 Standard Docker API 38 Easy to use 23 Native Cons 9 Low adoption
Integrations
No integrations available	Docker

What are some alternatives to HAProxy, Docker Swarm?

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions.

Rancher

Rancher is an open source container management platform that includes full distributions of Kubernetes, Apache Mesos and Docker Swarm, and makes it simple to operate container clusters on any cloud or infrastructure platform.

Docker Compose

With Compose, you define a multi-container application in a single file, then spin your application up in a single command which does everything that needs to be done to get it running.

Tutum

Tutum lets developers easily manage and run lightweight, portable, self-sufficient containers from any application. AWS-like control, Heroku-like ease. The same container that a developer builds and tests on a laptop can run at scale in Tutum.

Portainer

It is a universal container management tool. It works with Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm and Azure ACI. It allows you to manage containers without needing to know platform-specific code.

Traefik

A modern HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer that makes deploying microservices easy. Traefik integrates with your existing infrastructure components and configures itself automatically and dynamically.

AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)

With Elastic Load Balancing, you can add and remove EC2 instances as your needs change without disrupting the overall flow of information. If one EC2 instance fails, Elastic Load Balancing automatically reroutes the traffic to the remaining running EC2 instances. If the failed EC2 instance is restored, Elastic Load Balancing restores the traffic to that instance. Elastic Load Balancing offers clients a single point of contact, and it can also serve as the first line of defense against attacks on your network. You can offload the work of encryption and decryption to Elastic Load Balancing, so your servers can focus on their main task.

Codefresh

Automate and parallelize testing. Codefresh allows teams to spin up on-demand compositions to run unit and integration tests as part of the continuous integration process. Jenkins integration allows more complex pipelines.

CAST.AI

It is an AI-driven cloud optimization platform for Kubernetes. Instantly cut your cloud bill, prevent downtime, and 10X the power of DevOps.

k3s

Certified Kubernetes distribution designed for production workloads in unattended, resource-constrained, remote locations or inside IoT appliances. Supports something as small as a Raspberry Pi or as large as an AWS a1.4xlarge 32GiB server.

Related Comparisons

Docker Swarm vs HAProxy: What are the differences?

Scalability: Docker Swarm is a container orchestration platform that allows you to manage a cluster of Docker nodes. It provides automatic scaling of services across the cluster, ensuring that your applications can handle increased load efficiently. On the other hand, HAProxy is a load balancer that distributes incoming traffic across multiple backend servers. It helps to scale your application horizontally by directing requests to different servers based on various load balancing algorithms.
High Availability: Docker Swarm provides high availability by automatically rescheduling containers on different nodes in case of a failure. It ensures that your applications are always running, even if a node goes down. In contrast, HAProxy does not offer inherent high availability features. However, you can achieve high availability with HAProxy by using a load balancing setup with redundant servers and implementing failover mechanisms.
Service Discovery: Docker Swarm provides built-in service discovery, allowing containers to discover and communicate with each other using DNS-based service names. This makes it easy to communicate between services within the swarm without worrying about IP addresses. On the other hand, HAProxy does not provide service discovery capabilities by default. However, you can integrate HAProxy with external service discovery tools or configure DNS-based service discovery manually.
Load Balancing Algorithms: Docker Swarm provides different load balancing algorithms, such as round robin, least connections, and IP hash. These algorithms help distribute the load evenly across the containers in the cluster, optimizing resource utilization. In contrast, HAProxy offers a wide range of load balancing algorithms, including round robin, least connections, source IP hashing, and more. This allows for more granular control over load balancing decisions.
Container Orchestration: Docker Swarm is a complete container orchestration platform that handles container deployment, scaling, and management. It provides a unified interface for managing containers across a cluster of nodes. HAProxy, on the other hand, is primarily a load balancer and does not handle container orchestration tasks. It focuses solely on load balancing and proxying requests to backend servers.
Interoperability: Docker Swarm integrates seamlessly with other Docker tools and technologies, such as Docker Compose and Docker Registry. This allows for easy deployment and management of containerized applications. HAProxy, on the other hand, can be used with any backend server or application, regardless of the underlying technology stack. It is not tied to Docker-specific technologies.

Docker Swarm vs HAProxy

Overview